


stars in your eyes

by d_v_whelan



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 3
Genre: Gen, No Dialogue, Unnamed POV - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-08
Updated: 2018-06-08
Packaged: 2019-05-19 15:25:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14876345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/d_v_whelan/pseuds/d_v_whelan
Summary: the lone wanderer leaves vault 101 for the first time.





	stars in your eyes

Metallic grinding. This would not be the last time she heard the sound of a great vault door sliding shut, her on the outside, everything she had ever known on the other. Nor would she ever be able to forget this sound, for it would haunt her dreams for years to come.

But for now, worlds away from all of that, she had to focus on moving forward. 

She ran ahead, down, down the tunnel and away from home. The dirt made clouds of dust at her feet, and she coughed when they reached her face. Rocks scattered around her when she finally came to a sudden stop in front of a wooden door, its planks set apart so that she could see the light oozing in from the other side. 

She was at a crossroads with only one way to turn. She pushed the door open.

The sun blinded her, UV rays battering down harder than ever through the damaged ozone, causing her vision to become teary and making her eyes water. She ducked her head down, bringing her left hand up to cover her face as the door swung shut behind her.

Squinting, she turned away from the sun. She knew about it, from her old textbooks, but she hadn't expected it to be quite so bright, or hot. 

A green sign stood in front of the door leading to the entrance of Vault 101, and she circled around to look at it. 

_Scenic Overlook._

She turned to look over the hill. All she could see was gray, and dozens of destroyed buildings, and dust storms settling and resettling from some unfelt wind. There was nobody, nothing, in sight.

There was only one direction left for her to go, and it was down the steep hill leading away from the door and out onto what was left of the road. She turned and began to walk down it, but her foot slid on the gravel and she tumbled down, rushing to a stop when the ground became level again. She cursed under her breath as a sharp pain stabbed through her left knee, her entire body weight coming down on it.

She felt around, trying to regain her balance before standing. Dirt. Rocks. Something wet—blood? She was on her knees, her hands on the ground, palms scraped from where they'd tried to stop the fall. She'd scuffed the fabric of her vault suit in some areas though it was not quite torn in any obvious place. Her glasses sat a distance away. 

She reached for them, frantic. It was not the fear of losing her vision that made her heart pound, but rather the fear of losing the one connection she had to someone she loved. They were Jonas's glasses.

She stood finally, slipping the unharmed, if not a little crooked, frames over the bridge of her nose. The prescription matched hers well enough, though the light outside seemed to alter things. She was still not adjusted to the brightness, an annoyance she expected would last for a while, but hoped would go away soon enough. She'd spent nineteen years growing accustomed to the neon lighting in her hole of a home.

Now eye level with the ruins, she began to worry, more than she already had been. She knew there were horrible things out there; she had read it on the Overseer's computer. Her father could have gone in any direction, and could have been traveling for over a dozen hours now. He was no idiot, but she worried again, for him this time. _Did he even have any weapons? Or food? How did he know where he was going? How could he know?_

She tried to clear her head, fidgeting with the handle of the pistol she'd stolen from the vault guards. It was a shock, all the blood she'd seen after killing a few of them. Her hands were still shaking. She'd killed radroaches with a BB gun just a few times in her youth, and now she had a body count caused by a gun that wasn't even hers. Though she supposed it was hers now, because the other owner was dead. The thought made her shiver and she shook her head, staring off into the distance, trying to find something, anything, she could make her destination.

What she spotted was some large structure, clearly made after the bombs had dropped. It must have been Megaton, the town she'd read about in the Overseer's terminal before she escaped the vault. Her one hope at finding her father. Taking a deep breath in, she rubbed her bleeding palms on her vault suit and started down the crumbling remnants of the road.

**Author's Note:**

> feel free to follow me @jennystahl on tumblr!


End file.
